THE LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE - “These figures do not attempt to allege that foreign
nationals in the country illegally commit more
crimes than other groups,” the report states. “It
simply identifies thousands of crimes that should
not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the
perpetrator should not be here.”
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON

Thursday, July 5, 2018

As a growing number of Democrats and their allies call for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it’s important to remember that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants arrested by the agency have criminal convictions.

In 2017 immigrants with criminal convictions accounted for 74% of all arrests made by ICE, according to government data used by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in a study published earlier this year. Sixteen percent of those arrested by ICE had pending criminal charges and only 11 % had no known criminal convictions or charges, the Pew analysis found.

Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens deported by ICE last year were convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol and another 57,438 for possessing or selling dangerous drugs such as opioids. More than 52,000 ICE arrestees were convicted of immigration offenses, including false claim to American citizenship and tens of thousands had pending criminal charges for assault, driving under the influence and a variety of other crimes. Some had pending charges for more violent crimes like sexual assault, kidnapping and homicide.

Los Angeles, an illegal alien sanctuary city, topped the list with nearly nine out of 10 ICE arrests consisting of immigrants with criminal convictions. Newark, New Jersey had the lowest number with 60% criminal arrests but every region had one thing in common: “In all ICE areas, considerable majorities of arrests were for those with prior convictions,” the Pew study says.

The figures make the calls to abolish ICE, the 20,000-employee Homeland Security agency, preposterous. The growing movement includes elected officials—some presidential contenders—at the federal, state and local level as well as those running for office. Among them are senators Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Kamala Harris (California) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York). Warren and Harris are reportedly making White House runs in 2020.

Other federal lawmakers calling for the dismantling of ICE include Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and Massachusetts Congressman Mike Capuano. In a piece published by a mainstream media outlet, a law professor running for New York Attorney General writes that ICE is a “tool of cruelty and lawlessness and dehumanization.” The agency was born in xenophobia and fear, the lawyer asserts, and it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: “Terrorize immigrant communities, bring a police state inside our borders and treat people as less than human.”

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media appears to support the abolish ICE movement and has demonstrated it with biased reporting as well as the promotion of radical leftist ideas such as those published by the New York Attorney General candidate.

A mainstream national newspaper writes that the nation doesn’t need ICE and refers to it as an “agency that harms Latino and immigrant communities.” A northern California newspaper blames the Trump administration’s “hardline immigration policies” for transforming the idea of abolishing ICE from a pipe dream for liberal activists to a legitimate political issue. The article refers to abolish ICE as a movement that has seen a “remarkable rise from fringe issue to Democratic rallying cry.” A multitude of media outlets around the country have followed suit, shamelessly displaying their pom poms for the insane abolish ICE movement.

The reality is that ICE needs to be strengthened because the agency is overwhelmed, officers can’t keep up with monstrous workloads and repeatedly lose track of hardcore criminals inside the United States.

As a result hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens with criminal records are getting released by local authorities in the U.S., according to a federal audit released last year by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General. A surge in illegal immigrants under the Obama administration pushed matters into crisis mode with deportation officers so overworked that they often lose track of dangerous illegal aliens with serious criminal histories, the probe found.

This includes individuals who represent critical national security threats. One ICE agent cited in the report said this: “You might work 18 hours a day, but you still won’t get caught up.” Inspectors visited four key field offices and determined that the management deficiencies and unresolved obstacles make it difficult for the feds to deport aliens expeditiously. “ICE is almost certainly not deporting all the aliens who could be deported and will likely not be able to keep up with growing numbers of deportable aliens,” the DHS watchdog found.

WASHINGTON—Democratic politicians and advocacy groups calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are saying the agency is a “racist deportation force” and a “terrorist organization.”

Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops,” says these groups are “fomenting hatred, and it’s dangerous hatred.”

“They are playing a race card … the most powerful poison they’ve got, to try to delegitimize a lawful activity,” Mac Donald said. “ICE agents are not racist. ICE is not racist. It’s enforcing color-blind laws.”

ICE is the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement arm that operates in the interior of the United States as well as overseas. The agency employs more than 20,000 officers to carry out deportations of illegal and criminal aliens, as well as investigations into drug, gang, and cross-border crime.

On an average day in fiscal year 2016, ICE agents arrested seven child predators, seized 4,000 pounds of narcotics, arrested 13 transnational gang members, and refused 24 visas due to terrorist connections, according to the agency.

President Donald Trump has been a staunch supporter of ICE and law enforcement since taking office.

On June 30, as calls to abolish ICE swirled, the president took to Twitter to express support for the agency.

“To the great and brave men and women of ICE, do not worry or lose your spirit,” Trump wrote. “You are doing a fantastic job of keeping us safe by eradicating the worst criminal elements. So brave! The radical left Dems want you out. Next it will be all police. Zero chance, It will never happen!”

In an executive order issued days after his inauguration, Trump asked for an additional 10,000 ICE officers to be hired.

Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops.” (Courtesy of Heather Mac Donald)

‘Simply Ludicrous’ Analogies

The outcry over ICE gained steam in June after the administration called for all adult illegal border crossers to be prosecuted, in line with the law. Consequently, around 2,000 children were temporarily separated from their parents while the parent awaited prosecution.

Mac Donald said the media is partly to blame for the resulting hype and hysteria.

“It’s hardly neutral. I mean the constant coverage and hysteria over the border, Trump’s travel ban, and the zero tolerance policy—the analogy [they’re using] is to Nazism, to the Japanese internment analogies, which is simply ludicrous,” she said.

Holocaust survivor David Tuck told “American Voices” that he is “sickened” when he hears the comparison of children’s shelters in the United States to concentration camps.

“Please, this is not a concentration camp—they’re free. … I would think it’s a country club,” Tuck said in a video posted on Facebook. “You can’t compare. Anytime I hear it, it’s sickening.”

Politicians in New York have been progressively more outspoken about ICE.

Actress Cynthia Nixon, the Democratic primary challenger to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, called ICE a “terrorist organization” that should be abolished, during a speech at a church in New York on June 21. Cuomo himself issued a cease-and-desist letter to ICE on April 25.

Then-Acting ICE Director Tom Homan responded to Cuomo by saying ICE arrested nearly 5,000 criminal aliens from the streets of New York last year.

“So rather than a cease-and-desist letter, a letter of thank you would be appreciated,” Homan said at an event on June 5.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a socialist who beat incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) in the Democratic primary on June 26, included “abolish ICE” as part of her platform.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has since joined the “abolish ICE” chorus and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called for the same on Twitter.

“I believe we need to protect families who need help, and ICE isn’t doing that. It has become a deportation force,” Gillibrand wrote on June 28. “We need to separate immigration issues from criminal justice. We need to abolish ICE, start over and build something that actually works.”

Gillibrand, along with several other Democrat senators, joined hundreds of women who staged a sit-in protest at a Senate building in Washington on June 28. Almost 600 women were arrested and charged with unlawfully protesting.

Protesters demonstrate inside the Hart Senate Office Building against family detentions and ICE, in Washington on June 28, 2018. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Anti-ICE encampments started springing up near ICE field offices in several cities in late June, and individuals connected to the far-left Antifa group have collected and released the personal information of ICE agents online.

“That’s just absolutely irresponsible, shocking,” said Mac Donald. “Again, they are playing with fire, and it’s part of both the anti law enforcement hysteria that has taken over the country for the last four years and then just shows the depth of resolution on the open-borders left to impose their will by force and illegitimate means.”

The advocacy group United We Dream sent an e-newsletter out on June 30, calling ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “a dangerous and racist cancer on the liberties of all people.”

“They exist for the purpose of enforcing the racist doctrine of mass deportation. Members of Congress must immediately stop voting to give billions of dollars to the deportation force,” the group said.

Mac Donald said more politicians need to disavow this type of “poisonous rhetoric.”

“You are playing with fire every time you use this sort of incendiary language against law enforcement,” she said.

“If you can’t deport someone in the country illegally—if that lawful response is taken off the table—then there is simply no more national sovereignty, and the citizens of the country have lost any say over who comes into the country, and immigration policy is set then by people living outside the country.”

She said the “abolish ICE” rhetoric is the natural extension of a longstanding crusade against deportation as a response to illegal entry and illegal presence.

The Sanctuary Movement

The sanctuary city movement, which originated in Los Angeles in 1979, is the beginning of a larger push for open borders, said Mac Donald.

Sanctuary policies shield illegal immigrants from deportation, especially those who are convicted criminals, often by not allowing local law enforcement to communicate and cooperate with ICE.

By this logic, Mac Donald said, proponents of sanctuary cities are clearly saying it’s illegitimate to deport any illegal alien who has not gone on to commit another crime, beyond entering the country illegally.

From the beginning of the Trump administration until the end of the 2017 fiscal year, administrative arrests increased 42 percent compared to the same period the previous year—from 77,806 to 110,568, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics.

Ninety-two percent of those arrests were aliens who had a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive, or had illegally re-entered the United States after deportation (which is a felony).

Homan has repeatedly hit back at sanctuary cities for releasing criminal aliens back into communities rather than handing them to ICE.

“When you release a criminal alien from a jail, that criminal alien is going to return to his community and victimize the very community in which he lives—which are immigrant communities,” Homan said on June 5.

A nationwide manhunt is underway for three illegal aliens who are accused of kidnapping and raping two underage, teenage sisters in Bowling Green, Ohio.

According to WISTV10, four illegal aliens are alleged to have kidnapped and raped a 13-year-old girl and her 14-year-old sister at a Days Inn near Wooster Street in Bowling Green.

The teen sisters allegedly escaped the four illegal aliens after being held against their will and sexually assaulted, and were quickly taken to the hospital by their mother and stepfather.

Already in custody is 24-year-old illegal alien Simon Juan Thomas from Guatemala. Thomas was arrested and charged by Bowling Green Police with raping minors and is currently imprisoned on a $50,000 bond.

Illegal alien Simon Juan Thomas was arrested and charged with sexual misconduct with a minor and is being held on a $50,000 bond. His illegal alien accomplices are on the loose.

Meanwhile, the other three illegal aliens remain on the run with Bowling Green Police officials saying they believe the men have fled the region.

The three illegal aliens wanted are:

David Ramos Contreras

Arnulfo Ramos

Juan Adiel

Police say 27-year-old Contreras is from Mexico, while Adiel had been using a fake ID that claimed he was a legal resident of Fellsmere, Florida. All four illegal aliens were using fake IDs, according to police.

Police are asking the public to focus on the photos of each illegal alien, rather than their names, as they are unclear whether these names are real or fake.

Two of the illegal aliens allegedly worked as drywallers while the other worked at Greenline Foods in Bowling Green.

Police are advising anyone with information on the whereabouts of the men are to contact the Bowling Green Police Division at 419-352-1131, Wood County CrimeStoppers at 1-800-54-CRIME, or a local law enforcement agency.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the men is allowed to stay anonymous and are eligible for an up to $1,000 reward should the information provided lead to the arrest and conviction of any of the suspects.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

OPEN BORDERS: The Democrat Party’s Weapon of Mass Destruction on the American Worker

“The molestation was reported after the child was taken to a hospital for an outbreak of g enital h erpes early this month. When asked how she might have contracted the disease, the child claimed that Morales had molested her “a lot of times.”

"The legal age of sexual consent in Mexico is 12 years old. Sex with children at this age and younger is socially acceptable in Mexico. For example: A Mexican Lopez-Mendez pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a 10-year-old-girl in West Virginia." FROSTY WOOLDRIGE

AMERICA vs MEXICO: CLASHING CULTURES

By Frosty Wooldridge

Mexicans cheat, distribute drugs, lie, forge documents, steal and kill as if it’s a normal way of life. For them, it is. Mexico’s civilization stands diametrically opposed to America’s culture.

The legal age of sexual consent in Mexico is 12 years old. Sex with children at this age and younger is socially acceptable in Mexico. For example: A Mexican Lopez-Mendez pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a 10-year-old girl in West Virginia.

THE GRUESOME MS-13 GANGS FROM LOS ANGELES: THEIR MURDER, RAPE, AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS

Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens.

Border Patrol Arrests Gang Members, Child Molesters in South Texas

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector stopped five illegal immigrants from successfully making their way back into the U.S. The agents arrested two 18th Street gang members, two child molesters, and a man previously charged with felony sexual contact.

In a series of separate incidents, Border Patrol agents kept numerous criminal aliens from successfully re-entering the U.S. after previous removals, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

Agents arrested two 18th Street gang members in separate incidents in South Texas. In the first, Rio Grande City Station agents arrested a Honduran man near Roma. Elsewhere, Kingsville Station agents arrested a Salvadoran man about 80 miles inland, near Sarita. In both cases, biometric background investigations revealed the two men were members of the violent 18th Street gang.

In Donna, Texas, Weslaco Station agents apprehended a Mexican national after he illegally crossed the border. When agents investigated the man’s records, they discovered a 2007 conviction in Hidalgo County, Texas, for indecency with a child. He received a three-year prison sentence for his crime.

Further up the highway, agents at the Falfurrias Station came across a Guatemalan national illegally present in the U.S. The agents conducted a background check which revealed a 2004 conviction in Redwood City, California, for sex with a minor. The California court sentenced the criminal alien to 45 days in jail and three years of probation.

Agents assigned to the Rio Grande City Station arrested a Salvadoran man after he illegally crossed the border. The agents transferred the Salvadoran national to the station for processing where they learned the man had been arrested by the Saint Paul Police Department in Minnesota for felony sexual contact in the third degree. A court convicted the foreign national to three years in prison and placed him on probation for 15 years.

Agents processed all of the criminal aliens and turned them over to Homeland Security Investigation who will hold them for prosecution on immigration violations. Illegal re-entry after removal is a felony punishable by a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Their previous orders of removal will also be reinstated, officials said.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, GAB, and Facebook.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF LEGALS LEFT ORPHANED DUE TO A MEX MURDER???

Instead Francis Hernandez, an illegal alien driving 81 miles an hour, slammed into a pickup truck, killing the two women inside, and smashing it through the glass wall of the Baskin Robbins.

Francis Hernandez had been arrested 16 times in 5 years without ever being turned over to immigration authorities. That failure to enforce immigration law separated a little boy from his family forever. DANIEL GREENFIELD – FRONTPAGE

New York's 14th District's congressional nominee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is currently the darling of the Democratic Party. Running as a Democratic Socialist, the 28-year-old Latina managed to defeat ten-term Democrat incumbent and number-four Democrat in the House Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), and she did it by touting the virtues of wealth being socially and collectively owned.

In addition to believing that it's time for generational, racial, and ideological change, and in the spirit of former first lady Michelle Obama, who shared none of her pie but wanted the rest of us to "give up a piece of [our] pie so that someone else [could] have more," allegedly, Alexandria, aka Sandy, isn't all that into sharing, either.

Official campaign photo.

According to a food-server who worked with the former bartender at an East 16th Street taco and tequila bar, Flats Fix, on Cinco de Mayo 2017, the newly minted politician proved that when it came to divvying up the tips, collective ownership lost its appeal.

On the Democratic Socialist website, it says that "Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically – to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few."

If "profits for a few" is what Ocasio-Cortez condemned when running against Joe Crowley, why would she begrudgingly throw $50 at a waitress and pocket $510 for herself? If the soon-to-be congressional contender was really against pay inequity, shouldn't the server she worked alongside have been given half of Alexandria's take?

The only explanation for pocketing 90% of the contents of the tip cup and doling out a pittance to a co-worker is that, deep down inside, "people vs. money" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez considered herself the top 1% of Flats Fix and secretly believed that mixing Mayan Mules has more worth than schlepping fish tacos.

Wasn't it Ocasio-Cortez who said, "The definition of Democratic Socialism to me, again, is the fact that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live"? Is this the same woman who allegedly gave a waitress $50 for a night's work and kept $510 for herself?

The server was so shocked by the small amount of money she received that a complaint was registered with the management, who wrested another 50 bucks from Alexandria's tightfisted Democrat-Socialist hands.

The offended waitress told Richard Johnson of the New York Post's Page Six that after being treated that way by Ocasio-Cortez, "[f]rom that point on, I wouldn't talk to her. I couldn't look at her. It says so much about her character."

Six months after slighting a low-wage worker trying to make an honest buck, Alexandria packed up her tip cup and left Flats Fix to run against Congressman Joe Crowley as a Democrat Socialist and won.

WILL OUR CURRENT POLITICAL CONFLICTS
TURN VIOLENT?

Do
today's "woke" leftists really have the guts?

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

President
Trump’s recent string of wins ––especially the victories in the Supreme Court
decisions and the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy–– has incited the
Democrat “resistance” to even loonier excesses of rhetoric and rudeness.
Celebrities indulging juvenile vulgarities, boorish protestors harassing
cabinet members in public spaces, the twitterverse smoldering with calls for
violence and a “summer of rage,” and the buffoonish Representative from
California Maxine Waters calling for even more public harassment: all have some
people worrying that we are on the track of escalating violence that will turn
the “cold civil war” hot.

Count me as
skeptical for now. As bad as today’s political discord may seem, American
history from its beginnings has been filled with worse political conflict and
violence, from Shays’ Rebellion to Bleeding Kansas, from the Wall Street
bombing to the Haymarket Riot. And having spent more than forty years in the
university, the nursery of leftism and today’s parlor pinks, I see few people
with the gumption to actually back their blustering threats with risky action.

Any claims that
we are living on the brink of civil conflict inflamed by violent political
rhetoric must answer the question, compared to when? The Sixties and Seventies
saw urban riots that killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and caused millions of
dollars in damages. Politically motivated kidnappings and shootouts were
endemic. The 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
featured televised vicious battles between the police on one side, and antiwar
protestors and left-wing groups like the Yippies and Students for a Democratic
Society on the other. A jumpy national guard contingent killed four student
protestors at Kent State. During this same period, thousands of bombings from a
plethora of radical groups took place ––according to a 1970 Senate
investigation, more than 4,300 just between January 1969 and April 1970,
killing 43 and inflicting $22 billion in damage. And presidential primary
candidate Robert Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King were
assassinated.

And what are we
fretting over? Vulgar insults on late-night television, a rhetoric of violence
used by people who have never fired a weapon, public rudeness to politicians,
anonymous threats and virtual stalking, and other forms of bullying perpetrated
mostly by well-fed people of leisure who have no intention of risking their
lives and possessions for their zombie leftism. Of course, these sorts of
attacks can be disturbing to the victims, and any credible threat of violence
should be taken seriously by the authorities and investigated. But the worst of
what we’re seeing is still light-years from the assassinations and bombings of
50 years ago. And don’t forget, that leftist violence of the Sixties and
Seventies created a backlash that helped elect Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Our dearth of
that sort of genuine violence may be why we try to elevate murders by
psychopaths––like the ones who fired on the Republican congressional baseball
team last year, or more recently a Baltimore newsroom––into acts of political
violence stoked by ideological conflicts. In reality they’re no more political
than was the paranoid loser Travis Bickle’s rampage in the movie Taxi
Driver. In contrast, the violence of the Sixties was perpetrated by
self-styled revolutionaries whose acts were the consequence of their conscious
beliefs in revolutionary violence as the justified means to an ideological end.
They were psychopaths with seemingly rational and respected arguments,
infinitely more dangerous than your typical school-shooter egged on by his
private demons and paranoid hallucinations.

Compared to the
Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, or the SDS of the Sixties and
Seventies, our violent “resistance” comprises mostly posers and day-trippers
like Antifa. The level of their violence, mostly against property, does not
reach that of soccer hooligans, let alone the daily mayhem in inner-city
hell-holes. And unlike the ’68 protestors in Chicago, who faced beat-downs from
the police, these days protestors know the police don’t want to risk their jobs
by using the force necessary to deter such antics. They also know that most of
those arrested don’t face serious legal consequences. Their “resistance” is
more like theater for iPhone and news cameras, rather than the serious violence
that radicals in the Sixties committed.

Today’s
“activists,” then, are performing in a revolutionary operetta that isn’t really
about radical change, but about making a fashion statement and preening
morally. Of course, they may seem “passionate” about their beliefs, and even
believe they really are, but the true test of commitment is not attending a
demonstration to provide selfies for your Facebook page, nor blustering comments
and threats on an online site, nor browbeating your MAGA-hatted aunt at
Thanksgiving, nor verbally bullying a cabinet member out for a meal. This is
not Yeats’ “passionate intensity” that he saw in the political religions and
their violence in the Thirties, but a cheap knock-off that substitutes a
“revolutionary” pose and attitude for the real deal. It’s revolution in the
virtual world, where flourish the images and rhetoric that make us think a
violent civil war is looming. Meaningful commitment is the willingness to get
blood on your hands.

Typical of this
symbolic and gestural “radicalism” is the latest mascot of the “woke”
resistance, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who beat the fourth ranking Democrat in
the House in a New York district primary. This daughter of an architect, denizen
of tony Westchester County, and Boston University grad styles herself as a
“working class girl from the Bronx” and a committed socialist. But she’s really
what the Mexican kids I grew up with called a gringada, a Latina
culturally indistinguishable from a white girl. Her ethnicity is a costume she
uses to make herself attractive to her half-Latino district. As Daniel
Greenfield writes, she’s “an upscale
lefty hipster drifting after college from one activist gig to another,
developing the contacts that put her in the right place at the right time.
These are the bios of ten thousand professional lefties who infest the non-profit
sector. They’re all angry, self-righteous and interchangeable.”

In other words,
an aspiring race-tribune like the ancient Roman variety, the aristocrats on the
make who professed to champion the cause of the plebs in order to advance up
the cursus honorum of political power. The difference is,
many a Roman tribune fought and died in the Forum in pursuit of their
revolutionary reforms. Our race tribunes can look forward to dying in their
comfortable beds with a fat 401K or state pension, all funded by the wealth
free-market capitalism has created. Just ask Bernie Sanders, today’s
“socialist” Pied Piper whose “activism” has made him a millionaire.

Careerist
hipster “activists” like Ocasio-Cortez are not the sort of leaders who can
galvanize the masses for violent revolution, no more than are geriatric
plutocrats like Nancy Pelosi or George Soros, or political ventriloquist’s
dummies like Bill Maher or Joe Scarborough. And their “woke” ersatz-socialist
fans are just like them: well-fed court jesters for the rich and powerful of
the Acela corridor, lap-dogs who will snarl and nip but know exactly where to
sit in order to snatch the scraps dropped from the tables of the bipartisan
power elite. They know better than to risk biting the hands that feed them by actually
fighting with bombs and guns rather than safely blogging and protesting while
the police stand down, and the fellow-traveling media advertise their
“commitment” and “passion.”

Nor are today’s
“woke” millennials the budding shock-troops of the revolution. Snowflakes of
uncertain “gender” and vulnerable to verbal “microagressions” are not promising
recruits for class warfare. Guys who’ve never been punched in the face and fret
over their “toxic masculinity” won’t make it through Marxist boot-camp. The
kind of people needed for violent change these days are living in off-the-grid
rural compounds, or the “gangster paradise” where the businesses of drugs,
guns, and prostitution are much more lucrative than “transforming” America
along Cuban lines.

So let’s calm
down a bit with the rhetoric of impending violence. When we discover that
sizable battalions of organized, disciplined “resistance” outfits are
stockpiling guns and ammo, importing illegal armaments, spending time at the
range learning which end of the gun to point, and figuring out how to build
bombs by studying jihadist websites, then we’ll need to take them more
seriously. And do something about.

This doesn’t
mean civil violence is impossible. But if political violence returns to the
streets of America, it’s unlikely to come from aging hippies and entitled
millennials who treat politics like performance art, which is the luxury of
well-fed consumers with ample leisure time and discretionary wealth. It
will more likely come on the heels of economic dislocation and dwindling wealth
to redistribute. And while today we are fighting the rhetoric wars over
trivial “scandals” and lurid predictions of democracy’s demise, we are creating
the conditions for such economic disorder by our feckless policies of unsustainable
entitlement spending, rising deficits, and metastasizing debt. Those fiscal
chickens may be coming home to roost in just a couple of decades.

Moreover, the
social disorder of a serious economic downturn may be more extreme for us. The
greater affluence that we take for granted will make the decline in living
standards even more intolerable than in the past. Then we may painfully learn
the wisdom in Thucydides’ timeless warning about how people in times of wealth
and comfort––such as we are enjoying now with the economy booming and full
employment–– find it easier to indulge revolutionary words and gestures, rather
than take lethal revolutionary action. But when they “fall under the dominion of
imperious necessities,” whether because of war or, what is more likely in our
case, economic deprivation, the ensuing breakdown in order can “take away the
comfortable provision of daily life.” War or want becomes a “hard master and
tends to assimilate men’s characters to their conditions.” That is, in the lean
years we may find ourselves capable of brutal actions we’d never consider
during the fat years. Right now, the antics of the “resistance” are affordable
luxuries for the richest cohort of young people in human history. Let
that affluence disappear, and rhetoric indulged in times of comfort can turn to
lethal violence and the temptation of collectivist solutions that have paved
the road to tyranny in the past.

If we’re
really worried about civil violence coming to our streets, let’s do something
about the economic dysfunctions that are insidiously making possible the
conditions for such violence. That’s a more credible threat than are the social
media tantrums and potty-talk of spoiled brats.